


I had been looking for it...

by Snowflake_Hero



Category: Banana Fish
Genre: Gen, M/M, No Spoilers, No that much..., Not Beta Read, Platonic Soulmates, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-20
Updated: 2018-07-20
Packaged: 2019-06-13 16:12:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15368334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snowflake_Hero/pseuds/Snowflake_Hero
Summary: Ash keeps it jealously.





	I had been looking for it...

 

Ash keeps it jealously.

He puts it in his pocket. 

In more than one occasion he has swallowed it, sewed it to the inside of his jacket and put it on his shoe, even when the pain disallowed him from walking straight. He would have done the same if it were one of Griffin’s letters.

But this is a button, and it is  _his_. 

The button has an elegant relief, with unknown characters, singularly heavy and is completely his. It’s something that has fallen from the sky. No. Ash isn’t that stupid. Ash doesn’t believe in heaven. He doesn’t believe in angels, and he refuses to trust the gods…

Especially in those who has forsaken him.

He is spiteful and he knows it, because he’s not someone good.

He is a monster.

But the button is his . 

It is the only thing that has for himself, because he belongs to another ( others )

 

_._

Time later it’s a nibbled pen.

It appears under the bed. He founds it casually while looking for his shoes. He takes it between the index and the thumb and turns it over. It’s bright red, and he’s sure it’s not his. He had never seen one of these, nor does he have the habit of nibbling the tip.

This isn’t from this side of the planet, he discovers with alacrity lookin the strange sings lined. Kanji, his mind murmurs. In the booming voice of Shorter who had once seen the button, he had not taken it off, however.

“It’s from a Japanese uniform!” He exclaim with bright eyes. Ash wanted to hit him, but he never returned his photograph the one, for the nefarious ends in which Shorter used it. “But… it’s mine, you sure lost it …”

Ash doesn’t see the sulking Shorter again for the rest of that week.

However, when he visits the restaurant, Nadia invites him to drink jellyfish soup and it’s almost like being at home.

 

_._

The button is heavy in his pocket.

It has been like that since he was 10 years old.

The pen is kept at home.

And the small but strange “keychain” is stored on the top shelf of Dr. Meredith’s office. Ash sneaks into the night and leaves it in a place where they would never find it.

Not the nurse, not the doctor, not one of Dino’s thugs.

Ash never forgets the exact place where he leaves it.

Ash doesn’t ( _can’t_ ) forget these days.

 

_._

The next thing he finds is the lens of a camera.

He observes it as the eye of a fish, cold, impersonal and completely objective.

Ash detests cameras.

He detests every little component, the invasive sound of the  Flash , the hands that touch him, the hands that hold the camera. Ash hates it, hates it all. Even so, he doesn’t want to throw this out the window and see it shatter as he usually would, he can see the pieces glow against the afternoon sun, he can see them being there until the next morning and lit by the dawn.

That, for some reason, makes him angry.

So he leaves it on the bedside table. At an exact angle in which the corner of the drawer forms a triangle in the space that leaves the lens untouched.

 

_._

The next day the angle has disappeared.

Dino Golzine man’s has reviewed his apartment; they have moved it up and down.

 

_._

Eiji Okumura is a surprise.

He’s naive, and he’s kinda unwise, and he’s two years older than him.

Why has he remained pristine by the world while he has been marked?

That is a stupid question. He shouts. It is a completely absurd and unanswerable question, because he would have to believe again in something bigger, something that links him and observes all from above.

Ash doesn’t do it.

But, with the soft sound of Eiji sleeping beside him, Ash wants to believe it.He really wants it. Eiji is dead to the world, lost in a dreamland. Ash wonders if Eiji dreams of himself flying, or if he’s just the one who wants to fly. Maybe he drowns in the bottom of the sea, and every breath he gives is stealing Eiji’s air…

Ash shakes his head, squeezes the gun under the pillow and closes his eyes.

It’s the first time he wanted something in years.

The button is heavy in his pocket.

The weapon is light. It has become accustomed to touch.

 

.

“Oh!” Eiji says in surprise, Ash raises an eyebrow from the New York Times. Shorter once told him that this was a hobby of old people—well he has spent a lot of time between them and the dirty tricks are difficult to erase… “I had been looking for this!”

Eiji focuses his eyes on the dirty lens that is now in the kitchen drawer.

It is a unique green, like the bottom of beer bottles.

“It’s the same color as your eyes”. Eiji murmurs and his eyes melt in liquid honey, in pure adoration, naive and silly adoration. The kind of feeling that doesn’t expect to be reciprocal, that’s given without expecting anything in return.

Ash is becoming addicted.

What’s more, people have made more foolish comparisons, many of them from Papa Dino’s dirty mouth. Many from the fat fingers of others, many from women, and this is the first time that something hits and sinks into the bottom.

It is like a poisoned arrow, constantly pushed against the chest. Each day rubs the aorta, and every little day the poison infects and pumps through the veins. Ash doesn’t want to get rid of it. He wants to keep the sharp point in the center.

__Until everything is finished, until is consumed._ _

“You have a fever?”

Ash closes the eyes when Eiji’s cold hand is on his forehead, then, the neck, and his cheek.

The New York Times is helpless in the wood of the kitchen, the letters are mixed with the streaks of wood and the world falls out of the bubble.

The button is now heavy on his chest.

It isn’t painful.

 

_._

The first time he catches Shorter’s photograph again, it’s under the mattress.

“Ah, that’s mine”. Eiji seems embarrassed, but cheerful. “I found it at home a couple of years ago, someone must have lost it… I wonder if he still needs it…”

Ash swallows. His stomach feels full of feathers. But his head is heavy and his fingers are cold ice when he takes the button from his shirt pocket and shows it to Eiji.

Eiji smiles.

And then he says.

“I had been looking for it”.

He doesn’t need anything else.

Neither of them does.

 

**Author's Note:**

> This is a Soulmates AU... even when it not seem very obvious... And, yeah, what you lose is found by your soul mate. 
> 
> Thank you for reading. :D


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